They're drinking our beer. Here.
Tomorrow's Forecast
Dunedin's cold, squally, unpredictable weather is maligned by visitor and resident alike; not so well known is that the city has less rain than any town in the North Island, fewer rain-days annually than Auckland, average temperatures only one degree cooler than Christchurch, and a higher percentage of bright sunshine in winter than Wellington. The news always has the day's maximum too low. Try not to judge Dunedin by your first visit—for all first visitors it is cold and wet. Dunedin is like someone you meet for the first time who acts like a real arsehole but later somehow becomes a close friend.
The future looks bright. With continued global warming it is anticipated the climate will improve to Mediterranean standards at least. As the sea-level rises the squalid low-lying South Dunedin suburbs should flood, so that the peninsula becomes an island in the manner of Salamis, the harbour a channel overpopulated with yachts, and my City Rise cottage—where currently the coats at the door are to put on when you come in—an envied waterfront apartment, prime Pacific real estate sought eagerly by rich and famous the world over.
… acknowledgement is made of scenes and samples from DUNEDIN Friendly City of the South by Alan R. T. Brady; published by the Dunedin Rotary Club, October 1966.
PASSIVE SMOKERS
We live opposite a school, me and Rebekah, a primary school. They've only built it in the last year; before that there were the ruins of an old mansion on the site, with a high stone wall around the entire perimeter. Over a few months late last year they demolished the wall and the old house, and by Christmas the new low-standing buildings and large landscaped areas of grass were ready and waiting for the new school year. As before, there is a fence, but you can see through it now and these days the gate always seems to be open. It's as if they built a park just for Rebekah and me and most days after school's out and almost every weekend we'll go across to play ball or frisbee.
Rebekah's not so interested, but I like to sit out on the front step and watch the children at lunchtime and interval. I love kids playing together, the way they shout and scream, their easily shifting alliances, the way they get hurt and cry but moments later are already cured and shouting again. I mean, that was all of us once, wasn't it?
The last days of most weeks they seem to organise something a bit different from normal school, some special activity, with the mothers usually involved as well. Last week I think it must have been some kind of international food day—all sorts of bizarre and interesting smells were floating over. I went to check it out later, after they'd all gone home, but there was nothing left lying around or even in the rubbish tins to give any clues as to exactly what sort of food it had been.
This week—today—it's a pet day. Over the last hour mothers have been arriving with dogs on leashes; birds, rabbits and cats in cages and boxes; even a few bowls of fish. I can't say I entirely approve. All those animals together frightening each other—some of the dogs are real barkers—and it's not as if they've got a lot of choice in the matter. And of course things start to get out of hand. A couple of dogs get away from their owners and start running in circles around the school buildings, barking crazily, one finally mounting a third dog and trying to mate it. Two others get into a fight, pulled apart by a couple of red-faced mothers hauling them back on their leads. One of the fishbowls is dislodged from a trestle table and smashes on the ground. It could be my imagination, but I'm sure I can smell shit.
A small boy appears on the footpath outside our house, crying. He keeps his head down so no one will see, but the way he rubs his eyes gives it away. A moment later there's a woman as well. She's holding a cage in both arms and stands over the boy, telling him off.
It was your idea, she says. You wanted to bring him. She looks skyward for a second, removes a strand of hair from her face. The boy keeps his head down.
To my surprise they open our gate, start up the path to our house. I go inside to get Rebekah. She's better at this sort of thing.
We've lost our cat, the woman explains at the door. A wee grey cat with white paws and a bib, she says, showing his length with her hands. He's called Muffins. My son thinks he might have run across from the school. She seems on the verge of tears herself.
I haven't seen him, says Rebekah, but we can have a look if you want. They wander vaguely around the front for a while, checking under the hedges, but Muffins is nowhere to be found. Rebekah offers the woman a drink but she wants to keep looking out the back. She explains about the pet day as we walk up the hall.
We also own a cat who runs away. Norman has long black hair—it looks brown in the sun—with a tuft of white on his chest. His one negative feature is his tongue, which pokes out most of the time making him look stupider than he really is. A lot of our guests comment on that. He's always sneezing, too, and I remember someone once suggested he might be allergic to himself. He didn't used to run away, it just started happening last year without warning. Rebekah put a notice in the dairy the first time but there was no response and we feared the worst; eventually, though, he turned out to be at a house halfway across town where he'd lived for a while as a kitten. It had been years since he'd lived there but somehow he'd found his way back. We went over and brought him home as soon as we found out he was there, but he ran away again only a couple of days later, back to the same place. The people there didn't want him around because he was eating their cat's food and they were irritated by the tongue, but every time we brought him back he'd be off again within the next few days.
Finally, in desperation, Rebekah rang the vet. They suggested locking him in a cupboard for a week, then a single room, then another and so on until after six weeks we could let him outside. They wanted to put him on tranquillisers as well. The health-food shop man agreed with Rebekah that that all seemed a little harsh and suggested essence of honeysuckle, four drops twice a day. Honeysuckle is the Bach Flower Remedy for nostalgia, yearning and homesickness and it has seemed to have had some effect. At least now when he runs away he usually comes back of his own accord.
Rebekah convinces the woman to have a coffee after all and gives the boy some raspberry cordial. I just have some water. While she makes the coffee she tells the story of Norman. Don't worry about Muffins, she tells the boy, he'll turn up. His eyes are still red and he only sips at his cordial.
As she tells the story I find myself drifting off to sleep, a few vague memories teasing me: our other little cat Pierre run over, the time at the picnic area we saw a woman call a dog over and lock it in the boot of her car when she thought no one was looking. Or Aramoana that time, when we were coming back from the beach.
Aramoana is right out at the mouth of the long harbour that ends at Dunedin. The town itself sits back from the harbour, but it's only a short way further round the road to the beach. Rebekah has a friend out there so we leave the car at her place and walk the rest. I'd rate it as one of the better beaches around.
The particular time I'm thinking of we were late coming back and it was getting dark; I remember you could see the first lights of the city further up the harbour. There were all the old smells: salt, seaweed, fish. I was still a bit wet from swimming.
When we were nearly back to the township we noticed a man by the water's edge. His car was parked down the road a little with its boot open. He had a stick and seemed to be using it to hold something under the water. Rebekah said hello and he smiled back, a foolish half-guilty smile, as if he thought we must already know what he was up to. If he hadn't looked at us like that we might never have realised, but sure enough, once we'd gone down the road some more we saw him pull a bag from the water and lug it back to his car. There's only one reason you'd ever do that.
I've dreamed of him many times since, the man with the stick, those strange half-crazy dreams you have when you're sick or too hot. It was such a perfect evening you see, so warm and still and quiet, and then he had to go and do a thing like that.
By the time I
wake everyone else has gone. The air is full of cigarette smoke. Rebekah secretly enjoys interruptions like this: they're the perfect excuse for a quick puff—as if cigarettes are little flags marking the most interesting points in the day. Really, though, it's simply that she's addicted to nicotine. We all are when you think about it.
Outside, the search for Muffins has become a little diffuse. Rebekah and the woman are discussing Rebekah's herb garden; the boy is no longer around. It's a warm afternoon, there's the vaguest scent of flowers on the breeze—it could even be honeysuckle—and I'm thinking why not have a nap out here when suddenly I see a small grey cat with white paws and a bib crouching on the corner of the back shed roof.
Look! I say. There! Muffins!
Quiet! shouts Rebekah wheeling round on me and the woman turns and sees Muffins too—Muffins! she shouts in a high squeal—and I'm only trying to agree when Rebekah's right down on me, index finger on my nose.
Inside, she says, her voice full of menace. Inside.
I was only trying to help! I say.
Quiet! Now get inside!
I let my tail fall, turn, and go inside. There's a bit of sun still angling through the living-room windows so I go and lie down there. It's only now and then, but sometimes my life really gets me down.
FAST COLD
There's a damp facecloth in the front of our skulls that sits between two sprung clamps. Unhappiness releases the springs so the clamps push together, forcing water out of the cloth. The only way out for this water is through the eyes, and it runs down our faces, washing them.
Teenage boys are made to practise holding their eyes tightly closed at such times so the water is forced back into the skull. Only some of this water can be reabsorbed by the facecloth. The rest sloshes about in the hollow beneath, slowly rusting the mechanism, until it ends up not working at all.
CRICKET
The clubrooms were all decked out: carpet, new easily wiped tables with sunken glass jar ashtrays you could remove just like a pub, comfy chairs, a bar. There was a snazzy mezzanine floor with a brilliant view and angled-out windows, like a members' stand at a proper ground. After the game it was mainly the women who sat up there. The bar was downstairs.
Downstairs it was loud. The game had finished an hour before and there were maybe nine or ten small groups of conversation. Now and then laughter flung out from one like a sun flare.
Most of the men were still in their whites. Almost everyone had a beer, usually a glass in one hand and bottle in the other, but some drank from bottles alone, held in a possessive right arm hung horizontally across the chest as if in a sling. Everyone had red faces and whenever Richard looked at anyone carefully there was somehow a sense of grotesque close-up. Every vein, every nostril hair, every bit of crap in their teeth, everything seemed to be prominent.
Every few minutes he heard his name from somewhere in the room, and whichever way he looked people smiled at him as if he were a familiar friend. Sometimes they'd raise their beer up in a long-distance toast, a salute.
Richard—6, 3, 6, 4; 33 not out; a fine and in fact successful emulation of a diving left-hand catch that saw the end of the opposition's ring-in star, the only thing that had earned him a bowl in the first place—hadn't intended to be a hero. He hadn't even really wanted to come. He'd woken up hungover and still wasted from the night before to the phone ringing. Foolish in the way newly awoken people can be, he'd bumbled out of bed and answered it.
Yes?
Richard, mate. Nigel here.
Who?
Nigel. Nigel Weekes, from work. Is that Richard?
Oh, Nigel. Hi Nigel.
G'day. Look, mate, we're in a spot of bother with the team for the game today.
What game?
The annual fixture, mate. You know, Us versus Them, wipe out the bosses on a sticky wicket. It's the only time we ever get to show them Admin berks who's who, and they wouldn't take us on at rugby, now would they?
So it's cricket.
Well what else would it be? Ping-pong? We've got the after-match all sorted out, too. Free piss … look, mate, anyway, we had a team all jacked up, few of the lads, you know, but we've had a couple of late withdrawals. Dingo's fucked his back shifting wood, and Barry forgot he had a wedding. Reckons his missus won't let him off. Soft, eh. Anyway, I've rung a few guys but everyone's out or engaged or can't bloody make it; you wouldn't believe the excuses I've had to listen to. We really need you, mate.
Richard didn't know why he'd said yes. Weekes was a jerk; there were a few of them at work, the five o'clock Friday afternoon drinkers. They considered themselves the unofficial firm social club and extracted large quantities of liquor from Holtz, the overall boss, who mistakenly believed it was shared round. There was about a cricket team of them, too. Either way, Nigel'd made it hard to say no. Even at the best of times Richard had difficulty turning people down. With this very thing in mind he'd once done an assertiveness course, but all he'd learnt there was how to take back faulty shoes and make the shop assistant allow him to swap them for another pair. He hadn't bought any faulty shoes in the time since, but he'd had plenty of unwanted requests for goodwill he felt unable to refuse. Why didn't they teach you about that? Anyone can abuse a shop assistant.
He didn't have any cricketing gear, but Nigel told him to wear the whitest clothes he had. He had some ultra-tight old cords that were pale tan and a pink and white checked shirt. In the mirror he looked damn silly. Sandra just laughed.
Well why the hell did you say you'd play? God you look stupid.
What else could I do? Oh, San, I wish I'd said no.
Well just don't go. Roll me a number and come to bed.
He sighed. I can't. These guys, they're real wankers. If I didn't go now they'd really get me on Monday. When they go for a guy they really pin him. Honest, San, he was actually pissed off ‘cause some guy's going to a wedding instead.
Sandra sat in the middle of the bed like the heroine in an old horror, the covers drawn up round her like mountain sides.
Well that's fair enough, she said, all serious. Weddings are even dumber than cricket. Richard struggled with his fly. She smiled. Saturday seems to be the day for stupidity.
You know what I mean. Should I just go in jeans?
Everyone else had complete sets of whites, even shoes with spikes, except the other eleventh-hourer, Ewen Holbrook from Quality Control, who'd managed white suit pants and a faded yellow shirt. The jeans were a mistake.
Didn't I say wear white? was all Nigel said when he arrived.
Richard had played a bit at school but here there was a whole chapter of etiquette he was completely unfamiliar with. It didn't help hardly knowing anyone. Where should he stand? Who should he talk to? Everyone else seemed to have rehearsed their conversations; they laughed together easily. Several held bats with which they played imaginary forward defensive strokes. The air was full of strategy and loud reminiscence of games from previous years. Admin had won for the last three years running and Richard began to realise that under Nigel's jovial back-slapping there was a tight-lipped desire to win. In that context, people like Ewen and Richard were a nuisance. They looked gawkish and unprofessional, disrupted team unity and probably couldn't play.
Losing the toss, Workers were to field. Richard was banished to fine leg. After that he was ignored—probably his misfield in the first over didn't help—and maintained at fine leg so that he had to jog the entire diameter of the field between overs. After about four overs he already had no idea what was going on. He took to squinting up his eyes so the game blurred before him. He counted houses and tried to catch glints of reflected sunlight off cars driving by. He developed a formula giving the probability of passers stopping and watching the game dependent on sex, age, and number of people in their group. He tried to work out the exact total of his debts, slowly got sunburnt, and began to wish he could have a drink. The ball came his way a second time, and he misfielded again. He kept forgetting to shift when the over was co
mpleted, so that play was held up while he ran across to the opposite side of the field.
After a light year or two they had drinks. Some of the players had brought their wives and girlfriends who paraded in their thin-strapped dresses and make-up out onto the field with trays of glasses and big jugs of orange. They all wore sunglasses. Richard learnt that Admin were 126 for 2. Some guy who didn't even work in the firm and who according to Nigel obviously played 1st grade at the very least was 84 not out. This was serious, so serious that drinks were taken in tense silence. Mindful of ego, the women too said nothing. Richard went for more orange and Nigel muttered something about drinks only being for those who'd earned them. A couple of others looked like they agreed. Richard realised that he, the outsider, was being held to blame. A kind of gravity seemed to pull the tension towards him and he began to feel strangely upset, like he was at primary school all over again. He felt hurt and angry that this was happening and he wished there was some way he could tell them his side of it.
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